“If Tommy got a grub-box from home every chap in Buttery's house knew,”—Oxley was bent on reminiscences,—“it was shared round in three days, and his raspberry jam was not to be despised. I hear him yet: 'All right, Ox., dig in, there's lots left' Now there's By les, who makes speeches about hospitals: he was mean if you please.”
“Mean ain't the word for Byles,” and in his enthusiasm Freddie Beazley dropped into school slang, which no public-schoolboy ever forgets, and which lasts from generation to generation, like the speech of the Gypsies: “Byles was a beastly gut, and a sneak too; why, for all his cheek now he isn't fit to black Tommy's shoes. Tommy wasn't what you would call 'pie,' but he was as straight as a die. I'd give ten pounds not to have called him that word to-day.” Freddie was breaking down.
“Poor old Tommy!” went on Oxley: “one never expected him to come such a cropper; he was a good all-round man—cricket, football, sports, Tommy did well for his house; he was a double-colour man.”
“Do ye mind the ten miles, lads?” and Macfarlane chuckled.
“Rather,” and Freddie could not sit still: “he did it in one hour twelve minutes and was it fifteen seconds?”
“Thirteen and three-fifths seconds.” Macfarlane spoke with decision.
“And he could have walked back to Buttery's, as if he had never run a yard; but didn't the fellows carry him?”
“I had a leg myself.” Macfarlane was growing loquacious.
“Yes, and he didn't swagger or brag about it,”—Oxley took up the running,—“not he, but was just as civil as if he had won some footling little race at the low-country schools, where they haven't a hill within twenty miles, instead of running round Baughfell in the Soundbergh ten-mile.”
“What did old Tommy do it for?” and Freddie Beazley almost wept at the thought that the crack of Soundbergh had played foul: “it couldn't be money; he was never selfish—as open-handed a chap as ever I saw.”